Blood Harmony Vol. 40: 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s
Hello Blood Harmonists!
I recently started listening to 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s: The 2000s after I heard a million adverts for it during The Big Picture.1 The pod is hosted by Rob Harvilla, a rock critic with a great podcast voice. It’s an incredibly funny show that is also at times very moving and generally delightful. 60 Songs makes you feel like you’re sitting down in a cool but empty dive bar with one of your funniest, most musically erudite friends for a few hours of treasured pop culture discussion2 but this friend also happens to have a lot of backstage stories.
This season started out with a sad and sweet episode about Amy Winehouse that also referenced Sharon Jones (RIP to both). The second episode of the season is about “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers. This episode features copious dick jokes (like SO many) and made me laugh very, very hard.3 Plus, I realized that there are songs from The Killers that I like a lot more than “Mr. Brightside” and I now want to check out some of Brandon Flowers’s solo albums.
I was a little distracted though during the podcast though because I have a memory of talking about what I thought was this song roughly four years before its release date. In my memory, I was in college and I ran into my friend Obinna in front of the student union. He was listening to it and asked me “What do you think makes this song so great?” and I said “I think it’s the ‘only a kiss’ part”. Now, Obinna was many things: incredibly nice, always excellent smelling and the first person I met who wore non-prescription glasses because they made him look cool.4 He was not, however, magically able to get his hands on a song that hadn’t been made yet. So this really threw me for a loop. But then, dear reader, I realized my mistake. It wasn’t “Mr. Brightside” that we talked about that day. It was “How’s It Going to Be” by…gulp…Third Eye Blind. And I said “I think it’s the part when he starts screaming that makes it so great.” And now I have to live with that.
Other Things:
This week in Trader Joe’s thoughts: their sipping chocolate is fantastic but you do have to use a lot of it to achieve thick, European-style hot chocolate. The milk chocolate bar with corn flakes is a 10/10 no notes!
I finally watched Alex Garland’s movie Civil War starring Kirsten Dunst and loved it.5 Disturbing, of course. But also compulsively watchable with an incredible lead performance and an amazing soundtrack. Recommend.
I was recently asked out on a date by a new young friend in my meditation class. Listen, I am old and I have been in a long-term relationship for more than two decades. The last time I was on “the scene”6 was pretty close to when Third Eye Blind was still…erm..popular. So I was absolutely baffled as to how to respond in the negative. Luckily, my sibling has dated in the modern era so I was able to confer with them. After they stopped laughing, they had this to say about how best to negotiate this situation:
This has been a PSA for whoever needs it. Thanks for reading! Check me out on Letterboxd for more movie thoughts.
I hope host Amanda has had her baby and everyone is doing well! Pitching myself for a maternity leave replacement right here and now.
I think Rob would find it a lot more fun than my husband did to play a game I recently invented called “When and where I would have liked to have lived and attended concerts”. It’s loosely based on Rob from High Fidelity’s list of jobs he would have preferred instead of owning a record store. My husband cut me off at “Japan in the 80s!” and has forbidden me from bringing up this game again.
If you’re someone who is…ahem…lucky enough to get random text recommendations from me, here’s your second reminder!
As someone who started wearing glasses in fourth grade and always hated them, this concept blew my fucking mind. But then I remembered that Tess in Working Girl also appears to wear those amazing red framed glasses just for looks.
You also may have gotten a text about this.
Do the kids call it that? Asking for a friend.